About Tom Ashby
Tom Ashby writes The Faunalist’s poultry and backyard livestock guides, covering chickens, ducks and turkeys alongside goats, sheep, pigs and cattle. The bulk of it is flock feeding: what scraps are safe, what quietly causes trouble, and how much of anything a bird should actually get on top of a complete feed. He works from university extension poultry and animal science programs, which run the trials that most of this advice ultimately rests on, plus USDA material and breed standards from the American Poultry Association. Toxicity claims get checked against veterinary sources, not repeated from other blogs, because a lot of the folklore about what chickens can eat is wrong in both directions. Tom Ashby is a pen name used by a member of the Faunalist editorial team. He is not a veterinarian, and anything involving a sick bird or animal points to one.
What Tom covers
- Backyard chickens
- Chicken breeds
- Poultry nutrition
- Ducks and turkeys
- Goats
- Sheep
- Pigs
- Cattle
- Backyard livestock husbandry
Browse every article by Tom Ashby.
How these guides are researched
Poultry and livestock guides come from university extension poultry and animal science programs, USDA material and recognised breed standards from bodies such as the American Poultry Association. Toxicity and feeding claims get checked against veterinary sources rather than repeated from other blogs, because the folklore about what a chicken can safely eat is wrong in both directions, and treat advice always states how much of the daily ration a treat should be.
Identification, range and safety claims are checked against at least two independent sources before publishing, and where the sources disagree the article says so instead of picking the tidier answer. The full process, including which institutions we treat as authoritative for each subject area, is on our editorial standards page.
A note on the byline
Tom Ashby is a pen name used by a member of The Faunalist editorial team, and the portrait above is an illustration rather than a photograph. The person behind the name writes this subject area and nothing else. We do not claim degrees, licences or field credentials that our writers do not hold, and anything that needs a professional is sent to one inside the article. Our reasoning for working this way is set out on the editorial standards page.
Corrections and contact
Found something wrong in one of these guides, or have a question about a source? Write to [email protected] with the article name and what you found. Corrections are checked against our sources and made in the article itself.